V. I. Lenin

Eighth Congress of the R.C.P.(B.) March 18-23, 1919

2

Report Of The Central Committee

March 18

Comrades, permit me to begin with the political report of the
Central Committee. To present a report on the Central
Committee’s political activities since the last Congress is
tantamount to presenting a report on the whole of our revolution;
and I think that everybody will agree that not only is it
impossible for one individual to perform such a task in so short a
time, but that it is, in general, beyond the powers of one
individual. I have therefore decided to confine myself to those
points which, in my opinion, are particularly important in the
history of what our Party was called upon to do during this period
and in the light of our present tasks. I must say that at a time
like this I find it beyond my powers to devote myself exclusively
to history, to reviewing the past without bearing in mind the
present and the future.

To begin with foreign policy, it goes without saying that the
outstanding features here were our relations with German
imperialism and the Brest peace. I think it is worth while
dwelling on this question, because its importance is not merely
historical. I think that the proposal the Soviet government made
to the Allied powers, or, to put it more correctly, our
government’s consent to the well-known proposal for a
conference to be held on Princes Islands[2] I think that this
proposal, and our reply, reflect, in some respects, and in
important respects at that, the relations with imperialism that we
established at the time of the Brest peace. That is why I think it
important to deal with the history of this matter in view of the
rapidity with which events are occurring.

When the Brest peace was decided on, the Soviet system and even
Party development were still in the initial stages. You know that
at that time our Party as a whole still possessed too little
experience to determine, even approximately, how fast we should
travel the path we had chosen. The chaotic conditions that, as you
know, we had to take over from the past made it extremely
difficult at that time to survey events and obtain an exact
picture of what was going on. Moreover, our extreme isolation from
Western Europe and all other countries deprived us of the
objective material necessary to assess the possible rapidity or
the ways in which the proletarian revolution in the West would
develop. This complex situation made the question of the Brest
peace a matter of no little dissension in the ranks of our
Party.

But events have proved that this enforced retreat before German
imperialism, which had taken cover behind an extremely oppressive,
outrageous and predatory peace, was the only correct move in the
relations between the young socialist republic and world
imperialism (one half of world imperialism). At that time we, who
had just overthrown the landowners and the bourgeoisie in Russia,
had absolutely no choice but to retreat before the forces of world
imperialism. Those who condemned this retreat from the point of
view of a revolutionary were actually supporting a fundamentally
wrong and non-Marxist position. They had forgotten the conditions,
the long and strenuous process of development of the Kerensky
period, and the enormous preparatory work done in the Soviets
before we reached the stage when, in October, after the severe
July defeats, after the Kornilov revolt, the vast mass of working
people was at last ready and determined to overthrow the
bourgeoisie, and when the organised material forces necessary for
this purpose had become available. Naturally, anything like this
was then out of the question on an international scale. In view of
this, the fight against world imperialism had this aim—to
continue the work of disintegrating imperialism and of
enlightening and uniting the working class, which had everywhere
begun to stir, but whose actions have still not become completely
definite.

Hence, the only correct policy was the one we adopted in
respect of the Brest peace, although, of course, at the time, that
policy intensified the enmity of a number of petty-bourgeois
elements, who are not by any means necessarily hostile to
socialism under all conditions, or in all countries. In this
respect history offered us a lesson which we must learn
thoroughly, for there can be no doubt that we shall often be
called upon to apply it. This lesson is that the attitude the
party of the proletariat should adopt towards the petty-bourgeois
democratic parties, towards those elements, strata, groups and
classes which are particularly strong and numerous in Russia, and
which exist in all countries, constitutes an extremely complex and
difficult problem. Petty-bourgeois elements vacillate between the
old society and the new. They cannot be the motive force of either
the old society, or the new. On the other hand, they are not bound
to the old society to the same degree as the landowners and the
bourgeoisie. Patriotism is a sentiment bound up with the economic
conditions of life of precisely the small proprietors. The
bourgeoisie is more international than the small proprietors. We
came up against this fact during the period of the Brest peace,
when the Soviet government set a higher value on the world
dictatorship of the proletariat and the world revolution than on
all national sacrifices, burdensome as they were. This compelled
us to enter into a violent and ruthless clash with the
petty-bourgeois elements. At that time a number of those elements
joined forces with the bourgeoisie and the landowners against us,
although, subsequently, they began to waver.

The question that several comrades have raised here as to our
attitude towards the petty-bourgeois parties is dealt with
extensively in our programme and will, in fact, crop up in the
discussion of every point of the agenda. In the course of our
revolution this question has ceased to be an abstract and
general one, and has become concrete. At the time of the Brest
peace our duty as internationalists was at all costs to help the
proletarian elements to strengthen and consolidate their
positions and this drove the petty- bourgeois parties away from
us. After the German revolution, as we know, the petty-bourgeois
elements again began to vacillate. Those events opened the eyes
of many who, as the proletarian revolution was maturing, had
assessed the situation from the point of view of the old type of
patriotism, and had assessed it not only in a non-socialist way,
but, in general, incorrectly. At the present time, owing to the
difficult food situation and the war which we are still waging
against the Entente, a wave of vacillation is again sweeping
through the petty-bourgeois democrats. We have been obliged to
reckon with these vacillations before; but now we must all learn
a tremendously important lesson, namely, that situations never
repeat themselves in exactly the same form. The new situation is
far more complex. It can be properly assessed, and our policy
will be correct, if we draw on the experience of the Brest
peace. When we consented to the proposal for a conference on
Princes Islands we knew that we were consenting to an extremely
harsh peace. On the other hand, however, we now know better how
the tide of proletarian revolution is rising in Western Europe,
how unrest is changing into conscious discontent, and how the
latter is giving rise to a world, Soviet, proletarian
movement. At that time we were groping, guessing when the
revolution in Europe might break out—we presumed, on the
basis of our theoretical conviction, that the revolution must
take place—but today we have a number of facts showing how
the revolution is maturing in other countries and how the
movement began. That is why, in relation to Western Europe, in
relation to the Entente countries, we have, or shall have, to
repeat a good deal of what we did at the time of the Brest
peace. It will be much easier for us to do this now that we have
the experience of Brest. When our Central Committee discussed
the question of participating in a conference on Princes Islands
together with the Whites—which in fact amounted to the
annexation of all the territory the Whites then
occupied—this question of an armistice did not evoke a
single voice of protest among the proletariat; and that also was
the attitude of our Party. At any rate, I did not hear of any
dissatisfaction, or indignation, from any quarter. The reason
for this was that our lesson in international politics had borne
fruit.

Insofar as concerns the petty-bourgeois elements, the problem
facing the Party has not yet been fully solved. On a number of
questions, in fact on all the questions on the agenda, we have,
during the past year, laid the foundation for a correct solution
of this problem, particularly in relation to the middle
peasants. In theory we agree that the middle peasants are not
our enemies, that they need special treatment, and that in their
case the situations will vary in accordance with numerous
circumstances attending the revolution, in particular, the
answer to the question “For or against patriotism?”
For us such questions are of second rate importance, even of
third-rate importance; but the petty bourgeoisie is completely
blinded by them. Furthermore, all these elements waver in the
struggle and become absolutely spineless. They do not know what
they want, and are incapable of defending their position. Here
we need extremely flexible and extremely cautious tactics, for
sometimes it is necessary to give with one hand and take away
with the other. The petty-bourgeois elements and not we are to
blame for this, for they cannot make up their minds. We can see
this in practice now. Only today we read in the newspapers what
the German Independents,[3] who possess such
strong forces as Kautsky and Hilferding, have set out to
attain. You know that they wanted to incorporate the
workers’ councils in the constitution of the German
democratic republic, i.e., marry the Constituent Assembly to the
dictatorship of the proletariat. From our point of view this is
such a mockery of common sense in our revolution, the German
Revolution, the Hungarian revolution and the maturing Polish
revolution, that we can only express our amazement. It must be
said that such vacillating elements are to be found in the most
advanced countries. Educated, well-informed, intelligent people,
even in such an advanced capitalist country as Germany, are
sometimes a hundred times more muddle-headed and hysterical than
our backward petty bourgeoisie. In this there is a lesson for
Russia in respect of the petty-bourgeois parties and the middle
peasants. For a long time we shall have a difficult, double
problem. For a long time these parties are bound to take one
step forward and two steps back because their economic status
compels them to do so, and because their acceptance of socialism
is not due to a definite conviction that the bourgeois system is
worthless. We cannot expect them to be loyal to socialism, and
it would be absurd to rely on their socialist convictions. They
will support socialism only when they are convinced that there
is no other way out, when the bourgeoisie is finally defeated
and smashed.

I am unable to give you a systematic summary of the experience
of the past year and have glanced at the past only in the light of
what is required for our policy tomorrow and the day after. The
chief lesson is that we must be extremely cautious in our attitude
towards the middle peasants and the petty bourgeoisie., The
experience of the past demands it, we know it from the experience
of Brest. We shall have to change our line of conduct very often,
and this may appear strange and incomprehensible to the casual
observer. “How is that?” he will say. “Yesterday
you were making promises to the petty bourgeoisie, while today
Dzerzhinsky announces that the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries and
the Mensheviks will be stood against the wall. What a
contradiction!” Yes, it is a contradiction. But the conduct
of the petty-bourgeois democrats themselves is contradictory: they
do not know where to sit, and try to sit between two stools, jump
from one to the other and fall now to the right and how to the
left. We have changed our tactics towards them, and whenever they
turn towards us we say “Welcome” to them. We have not
the slightest intention of expropriating the middle peasants; we
certainly do not want to use force against the petty-bourgeois
democrats. We say to them, “You are not a serious enemy. Our
enemy is the bourgeoisie. But if you join forces with them, we
shall be obliged to apply the measures of the proletarian
dictatorship to you, too.”

I shall now deal with questions of internal development,
briefly touch on the main features which characterise our
political experience and sum up the political activities of the
Central Committee during this period. These political activities
of the Central Committee manifested themselves daily in questions
of immense importance. Were it not for the fact that we worked
together so well and so harmoniously, as I have already told you,
we would not have been able to act as we did, we would not have
been able to solve these urgent problems. As to the question of
the Red Army, which is now rousing so much discussion, and which
stands as a special item on the agenda of this Congress, we
adopted a host of minor, individual decisions which the Central
Committee of our Party submitted to and got carried in the Council
of People’s Commissars and the All-Russia Central Executive
Committee. A still larger number of important individual
assignments were made by the respective People’s Commissars,
all of which systematically and consistently pursued one common
line.

The organisation of a Red Army was an entirely new question
which had never been dealt with before, even theoretically. Marx
once said that it is to the credit of the Paris Communards that
they carried into effect decisions which were not borrowed from
some preconceived theories, but were dictated by actual
necessity.[4] Marx said this about the Communards in
a somewhat ironical vein because there were two predominant trends
in the Commune—the Blanquists and the Proudhonists—and
both were compelled to act contrary to their doctrines. We,
however, acted in conformity with the tenets of Marxism. At the
same time, the political activities of the Central Committee in
each concrete case were determined entirely by what was absolutely
indispensable. We were often obliged to feel our way. This will be
strongly emphasised by any historian capable of presenting an
integrated picture of the activities of the Central Committee of
the Party and of the Soviet government during the past year. This
fact becomes all the more striking when we try to embrace our past
experience in a single glance. But this did not deter us in the
least even on October 10, 1917, when the question of seizing power
was decided. We did not doubt that we should have to experiment,
as Comrade Trotsky expressed it. We undertook a task which nobody
in the world has ever attempted on so large a scale.

This is also true of the Red Army. When the war drew to a close
the army began to break up, and many people thought at the time
that this was a purely Russian phenomenon. But we see that the
Russian revolution was in fact the dress rehearsal, or one of the
rehearsals, for the world proletarian revolution. When we
discussed the Treaty of Brest, when the question of peace arose
early in January 1918, we did not yet know when, and in which
other countries, armies would begin to disintegrate. We proceeded
from experiment to experiment; we endeavoured to create a
volunteer army, feeling our way, testing the ground and
experimenting to find a solution to the problem in the given
situation. And the nature of the problem was clear. Unless we
defended the socialist republic by force of arms, we could not
exist. A ruling class would never surrender its power to an
oppressed class. And the latter would have to prove in practice
that it is capable not only of overthrowing the exploiters, but
also of organising its self-defence and of staking everything on
it. We have always said that there are different kinds of wars. We
condemned the imperialist war, but we did not reject
war in general. Those who accused us of being militarists
were hopelessly muddled. And when in the report of the Berne
Conference of yellow socialists I read that Kautsky had said that
the Bolsheviks had introduced not socialism but militarism, I
smiled and shrugged my shoulders. As if there was ever a big
revolution in history that was not connected with war! Of course
not! We are living not merely in a state, but in a system of
states, and it is inconceivable for the Soviet Republic to exist
alongside of the imperialist states for any length of time. One or
the other must triumph in the end. And before that end comes there
will have to be a series of frightful collisions between the
Soviet Republic and the bourgeois states. If the ruling class, the
proletariat, wants to hold power, it must, there fore, prove its
ability to do so by its military organisation. How was a class
which had hitherto served as cannon-fodder for the military
commanders of the ruling imperialist class to create its own
commanders? How was it to solve the problem of combining the
enthusiasm, the new revolutionary creative spirit of the oppressed
and the employment of the store of the bourgeois science and
technology of militarism in their worst forms without which this
class would not be able to master modern technology and modern
methods of warfare?

Here we were faced with a problem which a year’s
experience has now summed up for us. When we included the question
of bourgeois specialists in the revolutionary pro- gramme of our
Party, we summed up the Party’s practical experience in one
of the most important questions. As far as I remember the earlier
teachers of socialism, who foresaw a great deal of what would take
place in the future socialist revolution and discerned many of its
features, never expressed an opinion on this question. It did not
exist for them, for it arose only when we proceeded to create a
Red Army. That meant creating an army filled with enthusiasm out
of an oppressed class which had been used as mere cannon-fodder,
and it meant compelling that army to utilise all that was most
coercive and abhorrent in what we had inherited from
capitalism.

This contradiction, with which we are faced in connection with
the Red Army, faces us in every organisational field. Take the
question which engaged our attention most of all, namely, the
transition from workers’ control to workers’
management in industry. Following the decrees and decisions passed
by the Council of People’s Commissars and local Soviet
authorities—all of which contributed to our political
experience in this field—actually the only thing left for
the Central Committee to do was to sum up. In a matter like this
it was scarcely able to give a lead in the true sense of the
word. One has only to recall how clumsy, immature and casual were
our first decrees and decisions on the subject of workers’
control of industry. We thought that it was an easy matter;
practice showed that it was necessary to build, but we gave no
answer whatever to the question as to how to build. Every
nationalised factory, every branch of nationalised industry,
transport, and particularly railway transport—that most
striking example of highly centralised capitalist machinery built
on the basis of large-scale engineering, and most vital for the
state—all embodied the concentrated experience of
capitalism, and created immense difficulties for us.

We are still far from having overcome these difficulties. At
first we regarded them in an entirely abstract way, like
revolutionary preachers, who had absolutely no idea of how to set
to work. There were lots of people, of course, who accused
us—and all the socialists and Social-Democrats are accusing
us today—of having undertaken this task without knowing how
to finish it. But these accusations are ridiculous, made by people
who lack the spark of life. As if one can set out to make a great
revolution and know beforehand how it is to be completed! Such
knowledge cannot be derived from books and our decision could
spring only from the experience of the masses. And I say that it
is to our credit that amidst incredible difficulties we undertook
to solve a problem with which until then we were only half
familiar, that we inspired the proletarian masses to display their
own initiative, that we nationalised the industrial enterprises,
and so forth. I remember that in Smolny we passed as many as ten
or twelve decrees at one sitting. That was an expression of our
determination and desire to stimulate the spirit of experiment and
initiative among the proletarian masses. We now have
experience. Now; we have passed, or are about to pass, from
workers’ control to workers’ management of
industry. Instead of being absolutely helpless as we were before,
we are now armed with experience, and as far as this is possible,
we have summed it up in our programme. We shall have to discuss
this in detail when we deal with the question of organisation. We
would not have been able to do this work had we not had the
assistance and collaboration of the comrades from the trade
unions.

In Western Europe the situation is different. There our
comrades regard the trade unions as an evil, because they are
commanded so completely by yellow representatives of the old type
of socialism that the Communists do not see that much advantage is
to be gained from their support. Many West-European Communists;
even Rosa Luxemburg, are advocating the dissolution of the trade
unions.[5] That shows how much more difficult
this problem is in Western Europe. In this country we could not
have held out for a single month had it not been for the support
of the trade unions. In this we have the experience of a vast
amount of practical work, which enables us to set to work to solve
extremely difficult problems.

Take the question of the specialists which faces us at every
turn, which arises in connection with every appointment, and which
the leaders of our economy, and the Central Committee of the
Party, are continually having to face. Under existing conditions
the Central Committee of the Party cannot perform its functions if
it adheres to hard and fast forms. If we could not appoint
comrades able to work independently in their particular fields, we
should be unable to function at all. It was only thanks to the
fact that we had organisers like Yakov Sverdlov that we were able
to work under war conditions without a single conflict worth
noting. And in this work we were obliged to accept the assistance
offered us by people who possessed knowledge acquired in the
past.

In particular, take the administration of the War
Department. We could not have solved that problem had we not
trusted the General Staff and the big specialists in
organisation. There were differences of opinion among us on
particular questions, but fundamentally, there was no room for
doubt. We availed ourselves of the assistance of bourgeois experts
who were thoroughly imbued with the bourgeois mentality, who were
disloyal to us, and will remain disloyal to us for many years to
come. Nevertheless, the idea that we can build communism with the
aid of pure Communists, without the assistance of bourgeois
experts, is childish. We have been steeled in the struggle, we
have the forces, and we are united; and we must proceed with our
organisational work, making use of the knowledge and experience of
those experts. This is an indispensable condition, without which
socialism cannot be built. Socialism cannot be built unless we
utilise the heritage of capitalist culture. The only material we
have to build communism with is what has been left us by
capitalism.

We must now build in a practical way, and we have to build
communist society with the aid of our enemies. This looks like a
contradiction, an irreconcilable contradiction, perhaps. As a
matter of fact, this is the only way the problem of building
communism can be solved. And reviewing our experience, glancing at
the way this problem confronts us every day, surveying the
practical activities of the Central Committee, it seems to me
that, in the main, our Party has found a solution to this
problem. We have encountered immense difficulties, but this was
the only way the problem could be solved. The bourgeois experts
must be hemmed in by our organised, constructive and united
activities so that they will be compelled to fall in line with the
proletar- iat, no matter how much they resist and fight at every
step. We must set them to work as a technical and cultural force
so as to preserve them and to transform an uncultured and
barbarian capitalist country into a cultured, communist
country. And it seems to me that during the past year we have
learned how to build, that we have taken the right road, and shall
not now be diverted from this road.

I should also like to deal briefly with the food question and
the question of the countryside. Food has always been our most
difficult problem. In a country where the proletariat could only
assume power with the aid of the peasantry, where the proletariat
had to serve as the agent of a petty-bourgeois revolution, our
revolution was largely a bourgeois revolution until the Poor
Peasants’ Committees were set up, i.e., until the summer and
even the autumn of 1918. We are not afraid to admit that. We
accomplished the October Revolution so easily because the peasants
as a whole supported us and fought the landowners for they saw
that as far as they were concerned we would go the limit, because
we were giving legal effect to what the Socialist-Revolutionary
newspapers had been printing, to that which the cowardly petty
bourgeoisie had promised, but could not carry out. But from the
moment the Poor Peasants’ Committees began to be organised,
our revolution became a proletarian revolution. We were
faced with a problem which even now has not been fully solved, and
it is extremely important that we have put it on a practical
footing. The Poor Peasants’ Committees were a transition
stage. The first decree on their organisation was passed by the
Soviet government on the recommendation of Comrade Tsyurupa, who
at that time was in charge of food affairs. We have to save the
non-agricultural population that was tormented by hunger. That
could be done only with the aid of Poor Peasants’
Committees, which were proletarian organisations. And only when
the October Revolution began to spread to the rural districts and
was consummated, in the summer of 1918, did we acquire a real
proletarian base; only then did our revolution become a
proletarian revolution in fact, and not merely in our
proclamations, promises and declarations.

We have not yet solved the problem that faces our Party of
creating the necessary forms of organisation of the rural
proletariat and semi-proletariat. Recently I visited Petrograd and
attended the First Congress of Farm Labourers of Petrograd
Gubernia.[6] I then saw how we were feeling our way
in this matter, but I think that progress will undoubtedly be
made. I must say that the principal lesson we learned from our
work of political leadership in the past year was that we must
find organisational support in this field. We took a step in this
direction when we formed the Poor Peasants’ Committees, held
new elections to the Soviets and revised our food policy, where we
had encountered immense difficulties. In those outlying parts of
Russia which are now becoming Soviet—the Ukraine and the Don
region—this policy may have to be modified. It would be a
mistake to draw up stereotyped decrees for all parts of Russia; it
would be a mistake for the Bolshevik Communists, the Soviet
officials in the Ukraine and the Don, to apply these decrees to
other regions wholesale, without discrimination. We shall meet
with no few peculiar situations; we shall under no circumstances
bind ourselves to uniform patterns; we shall not decide once and
for all that our experience, the experience of Central Russia,
must be applied in its entirety to every region. We have only just
taken up the problems of real development; we are only just taking
the first steps in this direction. An immense field of work is
opening before us.

I said that the first decisive step the Soviet government took
was to create the Poor Peasants’ Committees. This measure
was carried out by our food supply officials and was dictated by
necessity. But in order to complete our tasks we must have
something more than temporary organisations like these
Committees. Alongside the Soviets we have the trade unions, which
we are using as a school for training the backward masses. The top
layer of workers who actually administered Russia during the past
year, who bore the brunt of the work in carrying out our policy,
and who were our mainstay—this layer in Russia is an
extremely thin one. We have become convinced of that, we are
feeling it. If a future historian ever collects information on the
groups which administered Russia during these seventeen months, on
how many hundreds, or how many thousands of individuals were
engaged in this work and bore the entire, incredible burden of
administering the country—nobody will believe that it was
done by so few people. The number was so small because there were
so few intelligent, educated and capable political leaders in
Russia. This layer was a thin one in Russia, and in the course of
the recent struggle it overtaxed its strength, became overworked,
did more than its strength allowed. I think that at this Congress
we shall devise practical means of utilising ever new forces on a
mass scale in industry and—what is more important—in
the rural districts, of enlisting in Soviet activities workers and
peasants who are on, or even below, the average level. Without
their assistance on a mass scale further activities, I think, will
be impossible.

Since my time has almost expired, I want to say only a few
words about our attitude towards the middle peasants. The attitude
we should take towards the middle peasants was, in principle,
quite clear to us even before the revolution. The task that faced
us was to neutralise them. At a meeting in Moscow where
the question of our attitude towards petty-bourgeois parties was
discussed, I quoted the exact words of Engels, who not only
pointed out that the middle peasants were our allies, but also
expressed the view that it would be possible, perhaps, to dispense
with coercion, with repressive measures even as regards the big
peasants.[7] In Russia, this assumption did not
prove correct; we were, are, and will be, in a state of open civil
war with the kulaks. This is inevitable. We have seen it in
practice. But owing to the inexperience of our Soviet officials
and to the difficulties of the problem, the blows which were
intended for the kulaks very frequently fell on the middle
peasants. In this respect we have sinned a great deal, but the
experience we have gained will enable us to do every thing to
avoid this in future. Such is the problem that now faces us not
theoretically but practically. You are well aware that the problem
is a difficult one. We have no advantages to offer the middle
peasant; he is a materialist, a practical man, who demands
definite material advantages, which at present we are not in a
position to offer and which the country will have to dispense with
for, perhaps, many months of a severe struggle that now promises
to end in complete victory. But there is a good deal we can do in
our practical administrative work—we can improve our
administrative machinery and eliminate a host of abuses. The line
of our Party, which has not done enough to form a bloc, an
alliance, an agreement with the middle peasants, can and must be
corrected.

This, in brief, is all I can say at present about the economic
and political work of the Central Committee during the past
year. I must now very briefly deal with the second part of the
duty entrusted to me by the Central Committee—to make the
Central Committee report on organisation. This duty could have
been performed in the way it should really be performed only by
Yakov Mikhailovich Sverdlov, who had been appointed to make the
report on this question on behalf of the Central Committee. His
unbelievably phenomenal memory, in which he retained the greater
part of his report, and his personal acquaintance with the work of
organisation in the various localities would have made it possible
for him to deliver this report better than anybody else. I am
unable to replace him even in one-hundredth part, for in this work
we were obliged to rely, and were absolutely justified in relying,
entirely on Comrade Sverdlov, who very often adopted decisions on
his own responsibility.

I can give you short excerpts from the written reports now
available. The Secretariat of the Central Committee, which was
unable to complete its work in time, has most definitely promised
that the written reports will be ready for printing next week,
that they will be mimeographed and distributed to the Congress
delegates. They will supplement the brief, fragmentary remarks
which I can make here. In the material of the report available at
present in writing, we find, first of all figures relating to the
number of incoming documents: 1,483 in December 1918, 1,537 in
January 1919 and 1,840 in February. The distribution of these
documents in percentages is given, but I will take the liberty of
not reading this. Comrades who are interested will see from the
report when distributed that, for instance, 490 persons visited
the Secretariat in November. And the comrades who handed me the
report say it can be only half the number of visitors the
Secretariat dealt with, because dozens of delegates were received
daily by Comrade Sverdlov, and more than half of these were
probably not Soviet but Party officials.

I must draw attention to the report on the activities of the
Federation of Foreign Groups.[8] I know something of
the work in this field only insofar as I have been able to cast a
glance at the material on the foreign groups. At first there were
seven such groups, now there are nine. Comrades living in purely
Great-Russian districts, who have not had the opportunity of
becoming directly acquainted with these groups and who have not
seen the reports in the newspapers, will please read the excerpts
from the newspapers, which I shall take the liberty of not reading
in full. I must say that here we see the real foundation of what
we have done for the Third International. The Third International
was founded in Moscow at a short congress, and Comrade Zinoviev
will make a detailed report on this and on everything proposed by
the Central Committee on all questions concerning the
International. The fact that we succeeded in doing so much in so
short a time at the congress of Communists in Moscow is due to the
tremendous preparatory work that was performed by the Central
Committee of our Party and by the organiser of the congress,
Comrade Sverdlov. Propaganda and agitation were carried on among
foreigners in Russia and a number of foreign groups were
organised. Dozens of members of these groups were fully acquainted
with the main plans and with the guiding lines of general
policy. Hundreds of thousands of war prisoners from armies which
the imperialists had created solely in their own interests, upon
returning to Hungary, Germany and Austria, thoroughly infected
those countries with the germs of Bolshevism. And the fact that
groups and parties sympathising with us predominate in those
countries is due to work which is not visible on the surface and
which is only briefly summed up in the report on the
organisational activities of the foreign groups in Russia; it
constituted one of the most significant features in the activities
of the Russian Communist Party as one of the units of the world
communist party.

Further, the material handed to me contains data on the reports
received by the Central Committee, and the organisations from
which they were received. And here our Russian lack of
organisational ability stands out in all its shameful
wretchedness. Reports were received regularly from organisations
in four gubernias, irregularly from fourteen, and isolated reports
from sixteen. The gubernias in question are enumerated in the
list, which permit me not to read. Of course, this lack of
organisational ability, these extreme organisational drawbacks,
are very largely, but not entirely, to be explained by the
conditions of civil war. Least of all should we use this to hide
behind, to excuse and defend ourselves. Organisational activity
was never a strong point with the Russians in general, nor with
the Bolsheviks in particular; nevertheless the chief problem of
the proletarian revolution is that of organisation. It is
not without reason that the question of organisation is here
assigned a most prominent place. This is a thing we must fight
for, and fight for with firmness and determination, using every
means at our disposal. We can do nothing here except by prolonged
education and re-education. This is a field in which revolutionary
violence and dictatorship can be applied only by way of abuse and
I make bold to warn you against such abuse. Revolutionary violence
and dictatorship are excellent things when applied in the right
way and against the right people. But they cannot be applied in
the field of organisation. We have by no means solved this problem
of education, re-education and prolonged organisational work, and
we must tackle it systematically.

We have here a detailed financial report. Of the various items,
the largest is in connection with workers’ book publishing
and with newspapers: 1,000,000, again 1,000,000 and again
1,000,000—3,000,000; Party organisations, 2,800,000;
editorial expenses, 3,600,000. More detailed figures are given in
this report, which will be duplicated and distributed to all the
delegates. Meanwhile the comrades can get their information from
the representatives of the groups. Permit me not to read these
figures. The comrades who submitted the reports gave in them what
is most important and illustrative—the general results of
the propaganda work performed in the sphere of publication. The
Kommunist Publishing House released sixty-two books. A net profit
of 2,000,000 in 1918 was earned by the newspaper Pravda,
25,000,000 copies of which were issued during the year. The
newspaper Bednota[9] earned a net profit
of 2,370,000 and 33,000,000 copies were issued. The comrades of
the Organising Bureau of the Central Committee have promised to
rearrange the detailed figures they possess in such a way as to
give at least two comparable criteria. It will then be clear what
vast educational work is being performed by the Party, which for
the first time in history is using modern large-scale capitalist
printing equipment in the interests of the workers and peasants
and not in the interests of the bourgeoisie. We have been accused
thousands and millions of times of having violated the freedom of
the press and of having renounced democracy. Our accusers call it
democracy when the capitalists can buy out the press and the rich
can use the press in their own interests. We call that plutocracy
and not democracy. Everything that bourgeois culture has created
for the purpose of deceiving the people and defending the
capitalists we have taken from them in order to satisfy the
political needs of the workers and peasants. And in this respect
we have done more than any socialist party has done in a quarter
of a century, or in half a century. Nevertheless, we have done far
too little of what has to be done.

The last item in the material handed to me by the Bureau
concerns circular letters. Fourteen of these were issued, and the
comrades who are not acquainted with them, or who are not
sufficiently acquainted with them, are invited to read them. Of
course, the Central Committee was far from being as active as it
should have been in this respect, but you must bear in mind the
conditions under which we worked, when we were obliged to give
political instructions on a number of questions every day, and
only in exceptional, even rare, cases were we able to do so
through the Political Bureau or the plenary meeting of the Central
Committee. Under such circumstances it was impossible for us to
send out frequent political circulars.

I repeat that we, as the militant organ of a militant party in
time of civil war, cannot work in any other way. If we did, it
would be only a half-measure, or a parliament, and in the era of
dictatorship questions cannot be settled, nor can the Party, or
the Soviet organisations, be directed by parliamentary
means. Comrades, now that we have taken over the bourgeois
printing-presses and papers the importance of the Central
Committee’s circular letters is not so great. We send out in
the form of circular letters only such instructions as cannot be
published, for in our activities, which were conducted publicly in
spite of their vast dimensions, underground work nevertheless
remained, still remains, and will remain. We were never afraid of
being reproached for our underground methods and secrecy, but on
the contrary were proud of them. And when we found ourselves in a
situation in which, after overthrowing our bourgeoisie, we were
faced with the hostility of the European bourgeoisie, secrecy
remained a feature of our activities and underground methods a
feature of our work.

With this, comrades, I conclude my report.
(Applause.)

Endnotes

[2]
The conference to be held on Prinkipo, one of the Princes Islands,
was proposed by the Entente powers and was to include
representatives of all governments existing on the territory of
Russia; its purpose was to establish peace. The Soviet Government
did not receive a direct invitation to attend the conference and
learned from foreign press reviews transmitted by wireless that
since there had been no answer from the Soviet Government the
imperialist powers were trying to prove to their peoples that this
was a refusal to take part in the conference. The Soviet
Government, in order to put a stop to all misrepresentations of
its actions, on February 4, 1919 sent a wireless telegram to the
governments of Great Britain, France, Italy, Japan and the
U.S.A. consenting to start negotiations immediately and pointing
out that it was prepared to make important concessions for the
sake of peace. The Entente governments left the Soviet telegram
unanswered and the conference did not take place.

[3]
This refers to the Independent Social-Democratic Party of
Germany, a Centrist party that was founded in April 1917. At
the Halle Congress in October 1920 a split took place and a
considerable number of members joined the Communist Party of
Germany in December 1920. Right elements formed a separate party
and retained the name of Independent Social-Democratic Party; it
continued in existence until 1922.

[5]
This refers to Rosa Luxemburg’s speech at the Inaugural
Congress of the Communist Party of Germany held in Berlin from
December 30, 1918 to January 1, 1919. She spoke in support of some
of the delegates who favoured the abolition of the trade
unions. She was of the opinion that the functions of the trade
unions should go to the Councils of Workers’ and
Soldiers’ Deputies and to the Council’s of Workers and
Clerks at factories.

[8]The Federation of Foreign Groups was organised in May
1918 as the guiding body of foreign Communists for work among
prisoners of war in Russia. The Federation was abolished at the
beginning of 1920.

[9]Bednota(Poor Peasants)—a daily newspaper
issued by the Central Committee of the Communist Party that
appeared in Moscow from March 27, 1918 to January 31, 1931. It was
founded by a decision of the Central Committee of the Party to
replace the newspaper Derevenskaya Bednota(Rural
Poor), Derevenskaya Pravda(Rural Truth)
and Soldatskaya Pravda(Soldiers’
Truth). On February 1, 1931
Bednota merged with the newspaper Sotsialisticheskoye Zemledeliye(Socialist Farming).